


How to spot a fake smile

by mediocre_kazoo_player



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, M/M, Unrequited Love, but that's a lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 13:46:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13812444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocre_kazoo_player/pseuds/mediocre_kazoo_player
Summary: He tells Saihara that there are two kinds of smiles: Duchenne and non-Duchenne. A Duchenne smile is the real one. It's the one where the muscles in your cheeks contract and form the wrinkles around your eyes. Wrinkles, look for the wrinkles. If you see the crow's feet, if the eyes are scrunched up, it's real.[They might have loved each other, but their timing could not have been worse.]





	How to spot a fake smile

Saihara knows a trick. It's one his uncle taught him back when he was fourteen, sitting at the dinner table, picking at the remains of two fish (maybe they used to be lovers!) under a singular yellowing lightbulb. His uncle. Saihara thinks of his uncle as a bunch of wrinkles in the fabric of reality, because that's what he looks like—one barely notices he's there until he sits up, a hunch-backed form that may very well vanish into thin air if the rickety lightbulb ensuring his existence happens to go out.

The set of wrinkles that are supposed to be his face move slightly when he speaks.

He tells Saihara that there are two kinds of smiles: Duchenne and non-Duchenne. A Duchenne smile is the real one. It's the one where the muscles in your cheeks contract and form the wrinkles around your eyes. Wrinkles, look for the wrinkles. If you see the crow's feet, if the eyes are scrunched up, it's real.

Saihara looks at his uncle. All he sees is wrinkles.

 

Akamatsu is non-Duchenne for hours on end. He steals glances at her from under the bill of his cap from time to time and her eyes don't smile. It's not like he blames her, anyway. Everything is fucked up and fucked sideways. There's no reason to smile.

Oh, but it happens once. When the light is leaking in and her hand feels warm on his, he sees the real deal. And he never wants to let go of it.

Funny how we realize so many things just before it's too late.

 

He tries to pick up the pieces, he really does. He's not sure what Akamatsu did to him. Maybe she put a hole in him. Maybe she grew roots in him. Either way, she'd been where no one else had ever been before, and now that she's been crudely yanked out of the picture, there's nothing left for him to do except haphazardly shove bits and pieces of things that remind him of her into that gaping void and hope that they'll fill it up one day.

Naturally, he goes looking for non-Duchennes. There's plenty to go around. Yonaga with her cheery little "ya-ha!" is just as fake as Toujou is just as fake as Momota is just as fake as anyone else. Saihara feels like he fits right in.

There are some dissatisfying exceptions. Gonta, because of his innocence, though Saihara guesses it's permissible in that case; Hoshi and Harukawa, who don't even try; and Ouma, who...

Ouma, who goes Duchenne, Duchenne, Duchenne, Duchenne.

It's almost disgusting. Saihara sees it again during the second class trial. His heart aches for the others, whose crumbling facades can barely hold in the face of this despair. But he's inclined to feel no sympathy for that putrid, that smarmy, that vile, heartless little bastard who dances around death as if it's all a Saturday morning cartoon. (Spits on Amami's grave, spits on Akamatsu's grave, spits on Hoshi's grave and now Toujou's preemptively.)

Saihara can barely contain his hatred each time he hears that sickening horselike giggle. There's no question that Ouma is having the time of his life. His eyes sparkle with genuine merriment and glee and while everyone is willing Toujou to run, run, run as fast as she can to save her people and her nation, he cheers for her as if she's the race horse he placed his money on.

He's like a child, but not an innocent one. Never. Ouma is the embodiment of that horror devoid of morals, that prepubescent sadism that is supposed to go _away_ by this age. He is the one burning ants with a magnifying glass. He is the one watching curiously and laughing in amazement as their shriveled little bodies crumble into ash.

Saihara tolerates him only for the memory of Akamatsu. He has to practice what he preaches, after all, and he's not going to let Ouma destroy the precarious unity she was able to establish in the last moments of her short life.

But it's hard. It's so hard to pretend to smile at someone he hates so fucking much.

"Maybe we were lovers in a past life!"

Saihara knows he's non-Duchenne right now. He sees a brief flash in his mind's eye, a scene at his uncle's dinner table again. Ouma is lit up ghastly white under the normally warm incandescent bulb. He's gutting two fish who were lovers and mushing their innards up playfully, clapping his slimy hands and spraying their blood everywhere.

Sick bastard.

 

Saihara spots Ouma slumped over with a pool of blood forming under his head. He shoves the _good riddance_ that pops up in his head down into a dark hole where nobody will find it. It's inhuman to celebrate someone's death. Perhaps that's what the killing game has done to him. No, not in a million years, he won't give in to it; he won't sink to Ouma's level.

He prepares to turn to Harukawa with a grim face and discuss how to properly announce a triple murder.

"It's a lie!"

Saihara isn't too fond of his natural meekness; it makes him overly mild-mannered and unable to assert himself. But he does give it credit now for mitigating the full effects of the white-hot rage that wells up inside him at this...silly ploy.

He keeps his mouth shut tightly as Ouma pops up like a _fucking_ whack-a-mole target and starts blathering on about pranking him or god knows what. Tolerance, Saihara. Don't let him get to you. Tolerate him even though he's a manipulative piece of shit who doesn't care for anything or anyone other than himself.

After a while, as Ouma stumbles away with blood dripping down his face, he lets out a long sigh that has been sitting and growing in his lungs for what seems like eternity.

 

There are times when Ouma is easier to stomach. Times when he seems almost human and not like a wolf wearing sheep's clothing simply for the thrill of it. Like the time he cuts his hand open and he bleeds like any other human being would.

As Saihara clumsily wraps the bandages around his still-dripping wound, he lets out a strange little laugh. It's a little hesitant, maybe even shy, but it eventually morphs into something more believable. Ouma's face colors a concerning shade of off-white and his cheeks look bruised. Saihara doesn't know what to make of it.

It's later in the day during a walk from who cares to who knows where that the puzzle pieces click. All that talk about stealing hearts must've been because...

Oh, ew. Ew ew ew. That _thing_? That conscience-lacking monster in the shape of an innocent boy? _That thing_ had taken a possibly romantic liking to him?

Disgusting.

But he has to tolerate it, for Akamatsu's sake.

 

Ouma's heart is in his throat as he sits on the edge of his bed that night, holding his fist up to the light and turning it this way and that to memorize the sight of the bandages on his finger at every angle he can. He'd been projecting his feelings earlier, of course, like a fool. It was Saihara who had taken his heart and killed him from the inside.

The gamble he took in injuring himself had unfolded disastrously. Though Ouma's hypothesis was that Saihara would look uncomfortable and direct him to the warehouse for a first aid kit, the latter had actually gotten the kit himself and bandaged the wound with hands that were all too warm.

_Saihara-chan is too good of a person, caring about everyone. He'll get killed like that._

Ouma pauses, enjoying the shadows the gauze casts over his knobbly malnourished knuckles when he holds his hand perpendicular to the ground.

_That's what it feels like when another human being touches you, huh?_

_It's warm._

_I want more of it._

He doesn't go to sleep until much later. Wiggling under the covers, he seizes the horse head plush and drags it under with him. He knows it hurts when he pretends it's Saihara, but he does it anyway. This is the closest he'll ever get to Saihara's warm hand on his face, gently tucking his hair behind his ear.

_I'd like someone to care about me._

He squeezes the plush tightly in his arms, trying to will away the weakness pushing insistently at the corners of his eyes.

_I don't care who anymore._

_Someone, anyone, please care about me._

No matter how hard he tries to make himself believe the big fat lie he effortlessly pulls over everyone else's eyes, he's just not skilled enough to fool himself. The weakness comes spilling out quietly in a steady stream, leaving shameful, blotchy stains on his pillowcase.

_Even if you can't care, can you hold me?_

_Just hold me._

_No, not even that..._

_No one would do that._

So he holds himself as he cries until his consciousness fades away.

 

Ouma doesn't consider himself a professional actor, but he dares say that he comes damn close to one.

He's best at smiling.

He picked it up from people-watching, noting the differences between a "here's your receipt" smile and an "I can't believe you did all this just for me" smile. It's all in the eyes, he thinks.

The youngest member of DICE (why can't he remember her name?) scampered up to him once with a large infected scrape spanning her elbow and then some, utterly distressed. "Is it bad?" (Oh, oh no, who did this to you, I swear I'll...)

He remembers scrunching his eyes up for the reassuring smile he gave her. "Aw, it's nothing. Here, let your supreme leader take care of it."

"Okay!" He also remembers being very pleased at the way her eyes scrunched up too.

 

Lately Saihara has felt a nagging uncertainty jostling for his attention. In the back of his mind there's a small thought that _maybe Ouma is lying even more than we think he is_. _Maybe there's something else he wants from us that no one has figured out yet._

Luckily for him, Ouma himself single-handedly squashes that thought and all of its pesky little siblings after the fourth class trial.

"You're alone, and you always will be." No matter how much malice Saihara injects into those words, it will never be enough. It will never be enough for a person who has never known compassion for another, will never be enough for a coldhearted murderer who took two down and got off scot-free.

Saihara has no more words to describe now infuriating it is to see Ouma complain of boredom and scamper off once more.

Unharmed.

Sick, sick, bastard.

 

Ouma makes a grand entrance into his room, stretching luxuriously with a wide grin on his face. He even throws in an exaggerated yawn. He strolls into the bathroom and starts shucking off his outfit, flinging the pieces carelessly on the ground.

The shower is the area least likely to be monitored. So far he has been unable to find any cameras or microphones tucked into the faucet knobs or screwed into the showerhead. And if there are indeed some present that he's just not been able to detect, well, he'll have to deal with that later. If he doesn't let this out now there's no telling how he'll screw up the next few steps in his super secret evil master plan to bring everyone down with him!

He wants to let out long, loud screams, but the white noise of the water rushing down all around him is only enough to cover choked sobs and whimpers.

Most of them are wordless, but he grows fond of "I'm sorry" from time to time.

An hour later, he comes out of the shower squeaky clean and hollow inside save for one thing:

_I am going to die the most painful death I can._

 

Momota denies him even that.

What is this supposed to be? Mercy? The press is supposed to come down slowly and he's supposed to hear his bones snapping one by one.

Instead, his bones crunch all at once like pretzel sticks and he barely feels anything.

 

Dead.

Dead.

Maybe he should respect the dead.

Saihara feels like the bottom has fallen out of something. He doesn't know what, but there is a pit somewhere, and it is deeper than he could ever imagine. Why is he doing anything anymore? He doesn't know.

He doesn't know why he's moving Momota's picture over to the dead pile on Ouma's whiteboard. Doesn't know why he's drawn a hydraulic press next to the little doodle of Ouma's face. Would Ouma want this? He has no idea. He might as well be a vandal.

The feeling mounting in him for a while now has made itself clear. Some people call it guilt, but Saihara thinks it's more appropriate to call it the "I am a horrible person" feeling.

If only he'd tried to understand. If only he'd been a better detective, befitting of his ultimate title. If only Ouma had been a little less cautious, made a bigger mistake somewhere, and let Saihara see all of this before he became a flat sheet of putrefying nothingness.

If only they had never been put into this killing game.

 

One lonely night, the emptiness inside of Saihara is screaming louder than it usually does. He lets it command him through the hallway like a zombie. He staggers right into Ouma's room and sits down across from Amami. _Hi, Amami-kun. Too bad you're dead too. I am so awfully lonely._

On second thought, he locks the door for the hell of it, then crawls under the covers like a filthy intruder. It feels like his own bed. What did he expect, anyway?

A little tossing and turning reveals that there's something crusty on Ouma's pillowcase. Saihara wrinkles his nose in disgust as he assumes the worst.

Oh wait, it doesn't really look like that. Whatever left these stains must have been salty.

Ah.

Something in his head short-circuits and he licks the pillowcase. He rubs his tongue against the roof of his mouth a few times to confirm that he has tasted a dead boy's tears. _Thank you for the evidence, Ouma-kun._

Some part of him wouldn't put it past Ouma to put saltwater on his pillowcase as part of a grand plan, but the more he thinks about it he can't fathom why that would help him in any way. He settles on these tears being the truth. Not like it matters anyway, now that the only one who knows is gone forever.

Nights in this room must have been unbearably lonely. This night, too, is no exception. Saihara picks up the horse head plush. It has a crown. Ha, he gets it. Where'd Ouma even find this, anyway?

The neck of the plush is the perfect size to wrap his arms around. Like a teddy bear, huh. He still can't discern whether Ouma acted young for his age or far beyond his years. He stops trying.

He stops trying to figure anything out and just fantasizes.

Saihara likes that his own picture is singled out on the board. The first time he saw it, it had irritated him inexplicably, but the second and subsequent viewings made him feel special. Someone like that couldn't figure him out. Someone like that trembled at his touch and tried to jest away the ruddy hue blooming across his cheeks at even the smallest contact.

Ouma cared.

It's intensely gratifying to wonder how happy Ouma would be if Saihara had also cared. (Too late. What a useless detective.) (Stop it.)

He descends even deeper into fantasy.

In this world, Saihara finds out early. Maybe he helps a concussed Ouma back to his room after the fake death episode, maybe he accepts Ouma's offer in the virtual world, maybe he breaks in out of sheer anger after the fourth trial.

In this world, he understands. Ouma becomes transparent. With Saihara's help, his plans finally work out, and they uncover the mastermind together.

"Saihara-chan is so cool!" "H-huh? No, it's nothing. It's your work that got us here, after all." "Aww, don't make me blush."

Saihara turns over in bed, tugging the plush along with him. He sinks yet another level deeper, down into delusion.

Ouma is sobbing into his chest this time. The tear stains transpose themselves from the pillowcase onto the front of his jacket. He hugs Ouma (the horse head, in actuality) tightly, swearing that he'll never let go. Swearing that he cares, he really does.

"You really do?" Ouma is overjoyed. Saihara hasn't honestly entertained the thought of kissing another boy before, but his emotions are in control here. It seems like the natural thing to do. Their lips connect, and it's the gentlest, sweetest, chastest kiss in human history.

Further into delusion.

He never hated Ouma.

The academy is exploding around them. God knows why. Saihara sweeps Ouma off of his feet and into his arms, bridal style. His arms are strong from training.

"Saihara-chan, watch out!" He dodges a flying boulder with ease. They escape the academy running, into a beautiful grassy meadow. Ouma calls him his savior and kisses him again, and it's the sweetest, most amazing—

Further.

The killing game never happened. Everyone is alive and well. Ouma confesses to him at school and he says yes a thousand times over. And they kiss.

Further.

And they make love.

Further.

They adopt a child and live happily ever after.

There's a Duchenne smile on his face right now but it's riddled with streaks of tears ending in puddles that overlap with the old ones. Never, never, never, none of these will ever happen, and it's all his fault. He hopes desperately that it's the delirium of these past few days tampering with his mental faculties that's causing these thoughts and not...not...not...he hopes he hasn't fallen in love with someone who's not part of this world anymore.

But this way he'll never be rejected.

He lets out a quiet scream against the back of the horse head, strangling it with his arms. He knows nothing. He thinks nothing.

When he's used up all of his tears, he's exhausted enough to pass out immediately.

He dreams of nothing, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm considering writing a part 2 to this, but idk if this is one of those fics that shouldn't be continued. We'll see I guess.


End file.
